Tompkins' Article

The history of the American Indian after the arrival of Europeans has always been a controversial topic. There are so many perspectives on the topic that the truth is very vague and obscure. Some sources claim that the Indians were violent savages, and completely inferior in terms of civility to the European white man. However, there are also sources that claim that the white man brutally treated the Indian, and took away the Indian's land, which they had no right to. There is rarely any historical account that is completely objective and unbiased, and there has to be a bit of perspective and bias for a piece to be interesting to read. Using the Indians as an example, it is impossible to write a good piece about them, or really any topic in history without a bit of an opinion. When you think about it, there was no “foolproof” evidence, such as the camera or camcorder, to document history as it was at that moment. Most history that we know is based on the accounts people made of the event afterwards. We don’t know how their opinions or emotions at the time could have impacted their accounts.
Even today, when we can use photography to forever capture events as they are happening, there are always opposing views and counterpoints no matter how obvious the truth may seem. Today, it is just more difficult on some topics to draw certain opinions. 200 years ago, it may have been obvious that the white man was at fault, the Indian was at fault, or both were equally at fault, but because there is no foolproof evidence of what happened, any of those viewpoints could have substantial credibility. Since we never will know what truly happened in the past, we have to make an opinion from everything that we know.